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This chapter discusses several female figures from Statius' Thebaid, a poem on the civil war between the two brothers Eteocles and Polynices. Hypsipyle is portrayed as an exiled foreigner, a displaced mother with misplaced affections, while Antigone and Ismene are transformed into the abject other, by regressing into their personal, yet unsafe space. Finally the poem ends with the appearance of the captured Amazons in Athens and the lament of the Argive widows, which brings the poet to an impasse and to his confession of utter powerlessness. Generic boundaries are reset, and gender...

This chapter discusses several female figures from Statius' Thebaid, a poem on the civil war between the two brothers Eteocles and Polynices. Hypsipyle is portrayed as an exiled foreigner, a displaced mother with misplaced affections, while Antigone and Ismene are transformed into the abject other, by regressing into their personal, yet unsafe space. Finally the poem ends with the appearance of the captured Amazons in Athens and the lament of the Argive widows, which brings the poet to an impasse and to his confession of utter powerlessness. Generic boundaries are reset, and gender hierarchies are crystallized, as the women remain alien and marginal.